


(fever) started long ago.

by SecretReyloTrash (BadOldWest)



Series: fever-verse [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Fever-Verse, Force Bond (Star Wars), M for the unerotic sweaty fever-induced naked cuddling and maybe some later chapters, Naked Cuddling, Rey catches a cold from human disaster Kylo Ren, Sickfic, empathatic connection, if they can feel each other's pain they can feel...other things, if you don't have a cold i don't know how appealing this is and yet here we are, like the flu, maybe because she force-teleported to his room the yell at him for the symptoms she caught from him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 03:18:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16508360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadOldWest/pseuds/SecretReyloTrash
Summary: “I can’t.”She glared at him, swiping over more of the clutter with her foot so it at least had a path going through it on the floor. “I need you to get better for me to feel better.”“I have responsibilities as Supreme Leader-”“Are you scared someone will see you being weak and call for a military coup against you? Is your power so fragile you can’t be treated for a common cold or the entire facade shatters?”That didn’t seem like real power.Just pretend.Rey had her hands on her hips. He lay there, on his back, miserable. And sneezed.





	(fever) started long ago.

_ “You don’t have a fever,” _ Rose said delicately, her hand delightfully cool against Rey’s cheek. Rey chased the hand as it withdrew, because it felt good against her hot skin. 

Even kindly, there was something skeptical in Rose’s voice as she looked down at Rey, cuddled under her blankets and missing out on lunch for another much-needed nap. The barracks were a chaotic flurry at this time of people shedding sweaty sparring clothes or scratching out their helmet-mussed hair before grabbing a bite. In the moments of reassembly, her friends found her here in bed, where she had been all morning. They were at least  _ trying _ to help her, just as confused by why she had been feeling so poorly all week.

Finn searching illness symptoms on a datapad, and Poe leaning protectively over her bed as Rose sat beside her, making sure she was okay.

_ It couldn’t be.  _ Rose’s remarkably cool hands were just too callused, burned, and scratched to feel anything. She wasn’t feeling how _ Rey’s face was on fire- _

Poe placed his own hand on her brow. His face told her the same thing. Her hair was not sweaty and her face was not flushed. No fever.

“It doesn’t feel like you’re warm, Rey, maybe you’re just hungry.”

“Or we should just let you nap,” Finn defended easily, casting a shy smile at her from the screen’s glow surrounding his face, “could be exhaustion.”

“I just haven’t felt like myself in days,” she murmured, her tongue thick and her voice weak. The response was so melodramatic and labored she scarcely recognized it, and had the vague sense to be embarrassed by the declaration. 

No fever. Her throat wasn’t swollen, it just acted all dry and choked like it was, she was dizzy, her mind was flickering in and out of focus…

She had been tired for days, but this was the day that her body just wouldn’t  _ work. _

“If you are sick, you should get to the MedBay,” Rose compromised, “so it doesn’t spread.”

At least there was a practical voice among the three of them. Shivering, Rey reluctantly lifted the covers and allowed them to escort her to the MedBay. 

* * *

 

Dr. Harter Kalonia was about as helpful. 

“You don’t have a fever.”

Rey tried to suppress an eye roll as the thermometer left her tongue. 

A firm hand held her chin steady. 

“Open.”

Rey stuck out her tongue and looked sidelong at the ceiling as the doctor peered closer.

“Throat isn’t red or swollen. You’ve been keeping hydrated?”

She coughed, but it sounded, due to the timing, incredibly fake. Her face flushed. She wasn’t  _ faking _ , she wanted to feel better more than anyone else-

“Yes,” she choked out. 

“And you say it’s been a few days of feeling lethargic, feverish, achy?”

“Yes, it’s been like I’m not even in my body.”

Kalonia merely drew her datapad that had been running some blood tests into her lap and shook her head. 

“I’m not finding any pathogens in your blood. There’s no sign of even benign illnesses. You’re perfectly healthy, I’m afraid.”

_ “I’m not lying,” _ Rey snapped petulantly, then flushed and looked away. She’d seen Chewie go back for check-ups just for Kalonia to fuss over him, she wasn’t doing the same routine he did. “I’ve been sick before, but not like this. Usually I can...carry on. I didn’t have anyone to take care of me. I’m not someone who just gets knocked out by a cold.”

“Well, it’s not a cold,” Kalonia replied gently, placing the datapad down to examine her face. “Perhaps psychological? I know that your friends brought you here today. Do you think it’s because you wanted to see them care for you?”

“I don’t...like the attention,” Rey bit her lip. “It’s not as if I’m faking it just so they worry. I know it changes the dynamic between us and I don’t like being powerless. Ever. So no, I don’t...there’s nothing in my mind that would fake sick so a few people fuss over me. There’s too much work to be done.”

Dr. Kalonia nodded, scribbling something down. “It’s not an impossible scenario, but I figured in your case unlikely as well. And you’ve been shrinking from the attention, so even if this was a test to see if you’d get it, you wouldn’t be sitting like your body is giving up if you hated it as much as you clearly do right now.”

Her slouch was pretty defined, and she didn’t even try to straighten her back at the mild joke. Was she faking it? Testing to see if someone would take care of her for once?

“I’m sorry,” Kalonia went back to the datapad, “I wish I could be more help. Is there anything else, psychologically, that may be going on to aggravate these symptoms?”

The only lie Rey told that day was a thick swallow and the word “No.”

* * *

 

Her clean bill of health invited in the option she had not wanted to even consider. The same idea that caused that sting sweeping across her face, over one collarbone, to a ways down her chest. The itch that randomly sharpened to a harsh ache every few days. Occasional phantom pains that had her jolt with shock and had people look at her like she was crazy.

The very same evidence that woke her up some nights, her thighs chording with tension and her core flooded with heat, like something warm and wet just pulled out of it. 

Yet nothing was there. 

As Rey went untreated, the symptoms went untreated, and only got worse as the days progressed. There was nothing to do but lie miserably in bed and accept the soup and juice her friends brought to her, but she sent them away and pretended she was fine when they tried to linger or fuss. So she wouldn’t feel like she was using them, for the attention.

The source of her illness was not in her own health.

It was in  _ his.  _

Eventually she broke. Rey spent that mentally foggy day meditating on the option. It was  _ agony _ because she couldn’t treat the symptoms from the source, so she was just chugging fluids and living off of citrus and sleep to no avail. She wasn’t treating the illness by taking care of herself. There was nothing she could do to cure this bug from her own body. And finally, when a sharp ache entered her skull that had her cry out in pain, she broke the wall down between them and entered the Supreme Leader’s chambers. 

He had sequestered himself there for the better part of the week. It was a mess, clothes all over the floor, balled-up handkerchiefs, dishes and canteens and a thin layer of dust to imply he hadn’t left that bed for a few days. She sneezed. 

The dust definitely wasn’t helping.

Supreme Leader Kylo Ren was  _ sniffling.  _

She kicked over an empty canteen on the way to his bed, it rattled noisily across the shiny onyx floor, but his face was tightened in a fevered focus on sleep. He wasn’t sleeping, he was curled up under too many blankets, probably overheating, and  _ thinking _ about sleeping in the way a sick body does when it is too uncomfortable to find that true reprieve. Still, his focus took him out of the room they were now both in, and when she brushed her fingers along his brow, she felt his fever. 

The same fever she felt in her own, without a germ in her throat making her sick.

Bastard. As if their connection did not inconvenience her enough. 

“You’re not dreaming,” she let him know, and his eyes unclouded from his confusion.

“Come to kill me at my weakest?”

She had never heard him sound more miserable, and that was saying a lot. 

He definitely said it more slowly than he thought he did. The words tripped clumsily off his tongue. His eyes were swimming like he was indeed very dizzy. This close, she sensed his sickness so thoroughly that she felt she almost needed to curl up in the bed as well. 

They sneezed simultaneously. 

Her own throat, unswollen, not red, perfectly healthy, struggled to form words in the same way. “Have you seen a doctor?”

He was perfectly still a moment, staring at the wall and plotting what must have been many plans of attack, but executing none of them. Just as she was sure he had planned getting out of bed, and cleaning up the mess, and ordering for food; but she knew the nature of this kind of fever. She almost starved to death on Jakku over something like this, her bare stash of extra portions in case she was sick or injured wasted away before the fever broke. The weakness of her body and how slowly it took to make it well again. 

He merely shook his head in a little quiver. 

Rey sighed, wanting Kalonia to see her now and accuse her of acting sick for attention or another’s care, where here she was, sluggishly searching through the canteens strewn on the floor for one with some water still left in it. One had a few sips left. She bent and brought it to his lips. 

Her mouth had not felt so dry since Jakku. 

He lapped clumsily at the opening of the bottle, his throat too swollen to suck or sip properly. She tilted his face back to the pillow and poured, filling his mouth, examining the fever on his face. The swallow looked like it pained him greatly; fearsome warrior he turned out to be. A sweaty lock of hair was caught in his eyes. Annoyed, she pushed it back off his brow. Stringier than it was silky, unlike the first time she’d seen him. Limp with sweat, and probably lacking a good deal of the usual product. 

He was a mess under her hands. 

This was the mirror of what she ached with. The warmth that clouded her senses. The fog in her head that no one could find a cause for. 

Maybe it was the same fever in her, for this didn’t feel real. Watering her enemy, seeing him at his lowest with nothing but mild pity and maybe a ghost of her usual disdain.

“You have to. I...I need you to,” the blistered skin on his lips made her wet her own as she spoke. “Get yourself better.”

His laugh was either a shudder or a sigh. So soft, sluggish. Under his chin, she saw how swollen his throat was. Watching him try to talk  _ hurt _ her. 

“I don’t think you’re  _ sentimental _ over my well being. You just feel it too.”

She assumed that speech sounded much more intimidating in his head without the pauses to deal with his dry mouth. And that he let out a long sigh when her cool hand draped over his brow. 

This was a dangerous thing for him to know, so she hesitated, but his gaze was direct on her face. He licked his dry lips. “I already knew that. We’re connected. Sometimes I feel your menstrual cramps.”

Fever must have loosened his tongue. He didn’t seem to know why she looked so disgusted. 

_ “Huh,” _ she pulled away from his bedside, her hands flat on her belly. 

Horrifying. Betrayed to him monthly by her own womb. 

He had at least said it bluntly, too easily deluded by exhaustion. She had the vague feeling he would tell her  _ anything _ like this. She should have used that. She couldn’t remember the questions that would win this war if she asked them now. Instead, she went to his refresher and found a washcloth. There was a kettle in one of the wings between rooms, the quarters compact but with high, imperious ceilings. She wondered if this was new, if he’d recently moved in. Or if this was always home to him. 

There was a level of human drama, like holovids of what little theater she had ever viewed, for him to be draped so limply across his bed. Like it was a deathbed, and she was hearing his dying wish. Which, well, with the way the war was going, was a little too good to be true. So much so the entire encounter felt cheap. 

The kettle came to a boil quickly, but she diluted it with some cold water so it wouldn’t harm his skin before wetting the cloth. Testing the temperature against her palm, she returned to his bedside. 

He felt the steam before he saw what it was attached to; his eyes had closed when she left him. 

“Intending to scald me?”

She gently draped the hot cloth over his face, pressing the steam over his nose and brow. She felt him breathing unsteadily under the cloth. But in her own pained sinuses, she felt the congestion dissipate from the heat. Eased for the first time in days.

“Smother me?”

It was muffled by the cloth. She shook her head, pressing it into the hollows where his closed eyes were, pinching the bridge of his nose.

There was a rumble of a moan against her hand. She watched his breathing even out as the steam towel did its work. After about thirty seconds, she rolled up partially up to free his mouth. Those lips were so red from the heat. 

She felt that she could finally breathe too.

Would he remember the kiss she suddenly wanted to give him?

“I must be really out of it, if you’re thinking what I think you are.”

She lurched back and went to find him a dry towel. He lifted the edge of the cloth and watched her move around the room.

He blew his nose, noisily, and that ruined the moment more than the awkwardness had. 

“You will  _ actually _ get sick,” there’s a congested, stuffy pause, “if you do that.”

“Are you hot or cold?”

“Cold,” he admitted, and just the mention had him twisting under his too many blankets. He was going to overheat. She knew because she did the same thing to try and preemptively break her fevers by bursting them in a cocoon.

She handed him a datapad. “Call for food. Maybe a droid to feed you if you can’t to it yourself.”

His fingers danced lightly over the screen, he had to really furrow his brow to be able to read it. 

“I want  _ you _ to.”

“Too bad.” 

“If a droid comes, you’ll leave.”

“Exactly,” yet she was picking up an overcoat, tossing it over a chair without folding it. She was tired of stepping on it when she walked towards his bed. “I’m not taking care of you. Call a medical droid.”

“I can’t.”

She glared at him, swiping over more of the clutter with her foot so it at least had a path going through it on the floor. “I need you to get better for me to feel better.”

“I have responsibilities as Supreme Leader-”

“Are you scared someone will see you being weak and call for a military coup against you? Is your power so fragile you can’t be treated for a common cold or the entire facade shatters?”

That didn’t seem like  _ real _ power. 

Just pretend.

Rey had her hands on her hips. He lay there, on his back, miserable. And sneezed. 

“My powers should have healed me by now…”

He sounded terribly sulky about it.

“You hardly even get any fresh air in here,” she examined the space, staring at the walls and ceiling. “Why not take some medicine and see?”

He let out a labored sigh. She retaliated by taking a blanket away.

She saw his bare feet twist like a small child’s, toes curling, shrinking away from exposure from the air. 

_ “Don’t,” _ it was coming out more like a slur than his usual crisp speech. She gripped the cover in her hands, twisting the material. 

“Call for a doctor, and I’ll come back for you. If I’m wrong, you can gloat to my face and everything.”

There were a few seconds of wheezy, congested breathing.

“Promise?”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

* * *

 

Halfway through a dinner where she had sat unmoving, staring at nothing, feeling too nauseous to eat again, something cleared. 

Like a mist lifting over water, finally sensing shore.

She sat up, breathing for what felt like the first time a week. 

_ Maker. _

She was able to listen to Finn, who had been talking beyond her comprehension for the past twenty minutes. She was able to laugh with Rose. 

She could  _ breathe _ again.

She ate as heartily as she could while her body could stand it. 

It was such a rush, like after so long of feeling sick she had forgotten how easy things were when you were well. The things she had taken for granted. Breathing. Focusing. Talking.

But just when she was feeling functional, like her old self, another hit came. 

It crashed,  _ hard. _

Drowsiness. Incapacitating drowsiness. She couldn’t keep her damn eyes open after stacking her day with all the things she’d been putting off for a week. Everyone looked twice as annoyed at her for doing nothing but nap all this time and then needing to reschedule the rescheduling from last week just to sleep again.

So she had no remaining tender feelings towards the heavily-drugged Supreme Leader when she flopped back onto her bunk for a much-needed rest.

So needed it was her only option to do with herself, even though she was ashamed. 

There was no going to anyone to check her brow for a fever. She was alone in this. 

Well.

Not entirely.   

She had made him a promise.  _ This _ was the result of him seeking a doctor. 

Perhaps the lingering fever brought her back to his rooms. 

She did not even bother with pretending she was there to take care of him this time. When she appeared, sluggish and sleepy, she opened her eyes to be in his bed, under his sheets.

He was shaking until he rolled over and brushed the skin of her arm with-

_ Oh, Maker.  _

He was naked. 

She had managed to avoid that information about him during the last visit.

_ “Kylo!” _

“Hmm?” he barely moved, even when she wrenched her body away from him. 

“I thought you said you were  _ so cold-” _

He was alert enough to sense the cause of her concern, but not enough to really do anything about it. His head rested on the pillow, his brow wrinkled in the exertion of even needing to explain himself in his own bed. Maybe he expected her to leave if it bothered her so much. Her foot brushed what could be a shirt, could be an undergarment, but was still warm from his body, and she swiped it away with an awkward kick. 

“I was sweating too much. Would rather have the blankets.” 

Her hand felt at his temple. There was a flush there, under the skin. 

“You’re running hot and cold?”

He nodded.

His sigh brushed down the bare skin of her arm. She tried to wriggle away. His arms closed around her waist. 

“My mother,” he paused, like she was making him admit this, through the absolutely no pressure or even mention she applied to this topic, “she always said that my fevers were very dramatic when I was young. She’d keep me company to wait them out, do work by my bedside, watch holovids with me.”

“That...sounds nice.”

“Didn’t put down the datapad. She was hardly a nurturer.”

“More nurturing than a desert,” Rey replied.

He pressed his face into her shoulder. “Oh, you are warm.”

“I’m saying you didn’t have it all that bad, if she stayed with you.”

“Mmm,” was his only additional thing to add, “you’re tired, too.”

“You knocked me out on cold medication. I was  _ trying _ to get things done.”

His smile was pleased with himself.

“I’ll make a habit of that, if it keeps this war in my favor.”

“You’re well enough to talk politics, it seems.”

He barely laughed, that same shuddery breath. “I’m  _ tired.” _

It was a partial whine. 

She tried to get out of bed, leave him to sleep. He didn’t like that. Groaning. Hauling her closer. 

“Rey. No. Stay here.”

“You’re drugged.”

He shook his head.

“Not why I said it. I want you to stay.”

She stared at his ceiling. An intimate view, one that she did not want. Someday, she might have to kill this man. If she knew these things, knew the pattern of freckles over his breast that the blankets had slithered off of, she might not be able to.

And the thought of  _ remembering _ these things in the future was bad enough. Thinking of killing him while looking upon him made her ache. 

“I don’t even want to be here.”

“But you came back. You promised you’d come back in the first place. Let’s sleep this off together. I promise, I’ll get well for you soon, if you stay here with me. Sleep. You were going to anyways, why does it matter where?”

“There isn’t  _ a naked man in my bunk _ back on base.”

He seemed to be smelling her hair, though clumsily through his stuffy nose. Maybe he was just sniffling, but his face was  _ right _ in her hair. 

“Another reason to stay right here.”

He’d bathed since she left. He smelled clean. His hair wasn’t limp, it was just damp. Pricking her cheek with his wet curls. 

“You’re only going to get sicker if you don’t dry that hair.”

“You do it.”

“I’m not your maid.”

“I don’t care.”

She sat up. He groaned, his bare chest curling into itself when the blankets fell back, and she yanked a top layer up towards them, wrapping it around his head. 

“Domestic goddess,” he groaned, nestling into the blankets she’d left in a mess on his pillow. “Taking care of me.”

“You were going to soak into the mattress that I have to sleep on.”

There was a tiny smile, so pleased he didn’t even open his eyes. “So you’re staying?”

Sleep was claiming her steadily. 

She closed her eyes. 

“Five minutes.”

* * *

 

At some point, she felt herself flush. Maybe her body temperature rose while she slept. Maybe it was his fever in her.

But she was moving, under the blankets, before she was conscious of it. Thrashing. She felt tied up. 

Almost yelled at him, if she had the voice to. It came out like a light groan. 

She sensed him move, holding the covers up so she wouldn’t get tangled. 

She was almost going to blame him, but-

Her pants were around her ankles. Her knees to her chest.  _ Her _ hands holding her pants there, struggling to push her feet through the legs to take  _ them off- _

“You have it too.”

His tone was flat; a guilty kind of flat. This wasn’t an empathetic link. This was a literal germ. She’d caught it from him, foolishly, in the hours that they slept. Maybe earlier, when she first visited his rooms.

The contagious bastard.

Frustrated, she jerked against the clothes confining her. How had a loose pair of pants become a tight string binding her ankles. Her fingers were shaky and useless, batting at the taut fabric.

The phantom symptoms were now painfully real. She had thought suffering through him was bad enough, but this was so much worse. Blindly, she reached for something to blow her nose into. The first piece of fabric she could pull to her face was what she chose. The noise was surprisingly loud, one of his eyebrows poised in an arch when the room went silent again. 

In her hand, she had fisted the fabric of his black cowl. It was finely made, soft too, now that she could see it between her fingers. 

“That cost...more than that speeder you had on Jakku. More than your  _ house _ on Jakku.”

_ “Wasn’t a house,” _ she wheezed dryly. If he'd searched her mind so well, he'd know that.

Her face was burning. His fingers brushed over her cheek. He shook his head, that same red flush crowning his cheeks. He nodded down to her tangled, half-naked body. "Didn't know what else to call it, 'house' seemed more polite than 'hovel'."

His eyes were still dream-like, so she knew he wasn't in the right frame of mind to diagnose, even if he was clearly trying to clear his head and offer an examintion of symptoms. 

_ “Hot,” _ she explained, arching her back to drag her wrap top open, cringing at the air that touched her for feeling  _ too cold. _ She sank reluctantly back under the blankets. 

“Oh, Rey.” He cupped her face in shaking hands. “I’m sorry.”

His hair was drying funny. It was decidedly undignified, sticking out in all directions from the wrap of blanket around it that had fallen away a long time ago. 

She shook her head, her throat so dry and swollen it felt like it was going to crack from speaking any more.

"You want it off?"

She hummed affirmatively. 

He undressed her carefully, like a doll, freeing her feet from her pants and moving her to properly slide her opened shirt off her shoulders. Limply, like the doll he treated her as, she complied. All she could do was shiver at the air brushing her skin.

Utilitarian. Sparing in physical contact, until he pulled her closer. Spooning behind her.

It was like melting into one self.

Laying her fevered skin against his fevered skin until they both sighed at the contact; finally the right kind of warm.

* * *

 

“I should go.”

Kylo shook his head.

He might have been stroking her hair. Matted with sweat. 

“You’re too sick.”

She was. It took over quickly, over the course of a nap. Like that tickle in the back of the throat at the fall of night that one prays never turns into a sharp ache; but it always does. No matter how much water is chugged or citrus is eaten or sleep is used to try and rest it out of the body. It will take over. 

Both of them, clouded in the same fever.

"Who's fault is that?"

"I couldn't help it. You came to me."

“Then I should go back.”

“You need someone to take care of you.”

She realized her cheek was against his chest. She’d curled to face him in sleep. His arms were still holding her against him.

_ For once _ she nearly replied, and that’s because she felt him thinking it so hard she almost answered him to  _ mind his own business. _ Her friends had wanted to, she just wasn’t sick enough then. 

It was just a feeling that they would never understand.

The bed won, in the end. It was comfortable and warm. It was like with him when she first arrived, there was no actively pursuing what she wanted. There were only the thoughts of it, up against the comfort of just lying still.

“Just don’t give me anything that will make me sleep more.”

She was tired enough. The medication he had taken that brought her here would wipe her out. They had been sleeping for  _ -how long?- _ since she got here. This stillness in the room each time she woke up, only to nestle closer, adjust sweaty limbs, pick both his and her hair plastered to her cheek out of the way, implied it had been hours. She had a breast band and underwear on. A few key motions against her had made it clear he had on nothing.

It didn't bother her anymore. Like an odd smell that stops being noticed from tenacious, constant presence. 

Skin to skin was the only thing keeping her properly warm. Not the blankets. Not the burn of her own fever.

He nodded. “Okay.”

_ “Only one droid.” _

More could create a dialogue, an across-the-board inconsistency, that would cause people to investigate what really was happening in the Supreme Leader's chambers. 

He reached blindly for the side table, fumbling for some kind of remote. She could faintly hear him comming for a medical droid.

She didn't feel caught. She didn't feel dread. Limply, she felt her spine relax, like she knew someone was finally handling it. 

This fever must have been worse than she thought. 

_ “Promise.” _

* * *

 

She grimaced at the needle in her arm. 

“I hope this isn’t how you kill me,” but the words were a breath with no volume. He quirked his lips in a smile. 

“You and **[unregistered guest]** need fluids and rest.”

Kylo had to continually override the droid’s attempts to identify her. It was getting irritating, the demanded protocol, for both of their fevered minds. 

She grimaced as the bumbling little droid buzzed over them in bed.

“Is that all you have for us?”

“Yes, Supreme Leader.”

“Perfect.”

He lifted his hand and with one gesture the entire droid collapsed inward like it had bellows expanding it to normal size. It did not, he just crushed it like it was meant to fold in on itself. Compacted. It dropped to the floor with a noisy clang.

“That wasn’t very nice.”

“Hmm,” he barely tried to soothe her, now both fed and given plenty of water and some medicine, easing her back into his arms. She would have to put a stop to her bare body touching his, when she came back to her senses. Now she just wanted his warmth. 

She searched his mind, vaguely, looking for a sense of smug arousal, getting his enemy nearly naked in his bed. But it wasn’t like that at all, in his mind. 

It was like they were in the womb together. Connected. 

The wrecked droid flickered with a few dying sparks. She pitied the annoying little thing.

“Keeps you from getting caught in here, Scavenger. I thought you didn’t want that.”

She reconsidered the deed chivalrous. 

“How do you feel?”

“Like bantha shit.” But he smiled as her head tucked under his chin. “But better, now.”

Her hair had come loose in their sleep, her was touching it, curiously. He had the energy to keep his eyes open and focus on things, so he must be feeling a little better. She wasn’t yet. 

Her chest-

This was the kind of fever that made discomforts unbearable. Like her restrictive breast band.

Rey was a modest person, _usually,_ but she’d already been coughing and sneezing on him for all this time, and that was something she also wouldn’t normally do. 

She blindly fumbled with it, pulling it open, drawing it off her body and dropping it on the floor.

It felt so much better. Her ribs could properly expand, because the thing holding her in place made it hard enough to breathe without the added congestion. 

“Scavenger…”

He didn’t seem to know what to say when her bare chest brushed his. Neither of them were in any state to be aroused, both of them were too...dehydrated. 

Distracted. 

She still couldn’t swallow, so her mouth was puddling with drool in her sleep, which he had polite enough to ignore. Still, not a good invitation to kiss.

They’d cough on each other, if they tried.

“Just don’t try anything,” but if she thought he would, she wouldn’t have done this.

His laugh was a cough, successfully proving her theory.

“How are you feeling?”

“Hmm,” she shrugged in his arms, the covers rising and falling, and she forgot, in her fever, that this was not normal. “Bad.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I think I caught it from my first visit. Which was still your fault, for not letting anyone take care of you earlier.”

“I…”

He was brushing her sweaty hair off her neck. She shivered, so he lifted the blankets so they were snuggled up to her ear. “I don’t like feeling weak.”

It was a lot for him to admit. She knew this. She knew his fear, even without having to draw it out of him. 

“But you’re so cute when you’re helpless on your back,” she drawled with her ashy, sick voice, and he laughed another shaky cough. 

Her teeth chattered, even with the covers up by her ears. His eyes flickered over her face. He watched her for too long, she could feel him thinking of what he wanted to do instead of doing it, until she pulled him closer. 

His weight settled over her body. Draped over her. Face against her neck. Bare skin along the length of hers. She shivered, drawing him in. He snuggled the blankets, and himself, around her so tight. It was baking, she knew she was sweating, but she just felt cold. 

“Sometimes I dream about hurting you. But I never see you, you’re just a faceless enemy that I have to defeat," he shook his head, concern written across his surprisingly open face, "But I don’t like this. I don’t like looking at you like this.”

The confession felt too intense. Again, the admission of someone who wasn’t in the right frame of mind. But his guilt was real.

But there was also an acknowledgement of how _wrecked_ she locked. Tired and sweaty and shaking. Something not even she could admit. That this was bad, and she needed help. And he was the one to see it. 

“It’s just a cold, Ben.”

He buried his face in her neck at the mention of his name. 

“Am I crushing you?”

“I may start to look like that medroid in a few minutes,” was she delusional, or were her thighs tightening around his hips when he tried to draw away? “But this is...thank you.”

He nuzzled her throat. 

“Warm enough?”

Her arms went around his waist. One hand met something that felt too rough to be skin, inhuman, and vaguely remembered his bowcaster wound. The scar.

“Yes.”

“Tell me to get off.”

“This is fine.”

“Then go to sleep.”

She hummed underneath him, with his body limp and soft, despite being so heavy, he really was merely draped over her. And this was a lot warmer. 

Sleep was the easy option, with their mutual fever. Chest to chest. It was maybe the easiest thing they could ever do together. 

* * *

 

He broke first. 

She could tell. His head nestled to her breast. The congested breath falling across her skin erratically. He wasn’t burning up anymore. 

She was, faintly, a lingering burn. 

But it wasn’t as agonized. This was almost...a post-hibernation, the phase where she’d wander out for food at the tail end of a sickness. 

He broke first, but she’d follow. 

It left her at a disadvantage, trailing behind. 

He was touching her face again. Feeling her cheek with the flat of his palm.

His body wasn’t really rested against hers, maybe the weight lighting form her is what woke her. He crouched over her, which would feeling caging if he wasn’t trying so hard not to touch her with his bare skin. 

“How do you feel?”

She cleared her throat. It hurt, but it was more phlegm than just hurt.

He want to the 'fresher and performed the same anointing ritual on her with the steam towel. He was very careful to check the temperature against the inside of his wrist, which she guessed was more sensitive than his calloused hands. 

That felt amazing, like a dam breaking in her sinuses. Relief overwhelmed disgust, at this stage of the cold. 

“Do you have something I can blow my nose with?”

He silently handed her the same cowl from before. 

* * *

 

He had his day to take care of her. Where he was stuffy but functional, halfway renewed energy, and instead of sending her away, he stayed in bed with her one more day. 

He worked on his datapad, a hand idly on her skin as he focused. She slept on and off. Trying to keep track of her enemy. Failing because sleeping, and his hand, felt so good.

Thumbing circles on her naked shoulder. 

Licking his lips when he read, as if stopping to think, without even looking up from the screen.

Laughing to himself when she requested a holovid, pulling something up and watching the figures flicker blue across the sheets. 

Calling for food, hiding her under the covers like a smuggled lover when a droid would come in. She was out of it enough to not even thinking of ducking her head to rest without moving so close to his naked lap. They were black sheets, because this was him, and very dark, but she was having a hard enough to time breathing to even consider him stealing her breath with his nudity. 

Again, he busted that droid into pieces when it was done serving him. Laughing as Rey lamented the rubble, the waste, in a battlefield of broken parts. 

“Even the  _ scraps  _ are worth-”

But she coughed, overexerted in her passion for salvaging. 

She wondered what was going on with her body back on base. If it was there at all. 

There was the awkward subject of when they were going to put clothes on. A subject they ignored. Dressing would, unless done with the highest level of delicacy, expose their bodies to scrutiny that fever had blurred. She knew her pants were on the floor, had no placement on her breast band. His clothes, because he stripped with her gone, were  _ everywhere _ in his messy chamber. He could no more easily re-dress than he could march naked to his closet and select a new outfit, exposing everything to her when he did.

“After this, are we going to remember how to hate each other?”

His tone was mocking, because he was tentatively feeling her brow for her temperature. Gingerly cupping his hand to the thinnest parts of her skull. 

They were both human. The illness had proved that. They could feel the same things. Even weakness. 

Rey swallowed thickly. 

“This changes nothing between us.”

He surprised her with a chuckle.

“It’s easier to say out loud, isn’t it? That’s how you convince yourself of terrible things. Say it first, and then follow the words like a plan.”

He stared at the foot of the bed, his chest rising and falling with his labored breath. 

“Why is that harder for you to do than to say?”

“Because this,” he motioned between them. “It almost felt like, if in another life...if we were anyone else. I could wake up with you here, and we’d be happy about it. How you felt here, it was almost-”

Natural.

She reached for her clothes with shaking hands, blankets tight to her chest. She was too wheezy to be breathing this hard. Nervously, he leaned across the bed and caught her arm. 

“Easy,” he soothed, guiding her to lie down, “easy, Rey. Forget I said anything. I’m still...out of it.”

She stared at the ceiling. 

Maybe she had always hoped someone else would kill him.

That it wouldn’t have to be her.

But who else was strong enough? Hadn’t they always been two halves growing towards each other? Destined to meet in the middle of these two sides so this conflict could end?

“It’s hard to be alone, feeling like this. Perhaps that’s my own weakness, but you knew that well enough before I chose to stay.”

“But you won’t, any longer.”

His tone was guarded, measured. She nodded.

“Before you go,” he cleared his throat. His head brushed closer to hers. The comforting thing about shared illness was they didn’t have to be self-conscious about germs, or even proximity. But that wasn't entirely new. “If I got you naked in my bed and didn’t even try to do this, I’d never…”

His hair hung over her face. She swallowed. Sniffed as he leaned down over her. 

He was going to kiss her. Gently, she could tell, from the way he was brushing her sweaty hair out of her face. Maybe too gently for her fevered heart. Maybe too gently for her foggy head. 

His eyes were so  _ big, _ hovering over hers, trying to find an answer when she was just as frantically searching. They had been entangled, naked, against each other’s bodies for days, but the mere thought of this was causing them to fall into darkness.

He paused above her mouth, concern and doubt crossing his features.

This would infect so much deeper in them both. Maybe incurably. 

She could feel him trying again, despite all his insecurities, all his greatest shame:

“Do you want-”

Rey burst from the room before his lips brushed hers. 

She woke up in her clothes, in her Resistance bed, with Rose asleep in a chair by her bedside. 

There was a weight in her head, the last day of a bad cold kind of block. She shut her eyes and blew her nose, startling Rose awake.

“Oh,” Rose sneezed, “you’re up.”

“Hi,” Rey rolled over, her cheek on her pillow. Her pillow. Not his sweat-soaked one that started to smell like her. Like she’d colonized his bed.

“You were out for days.”

“Was I?”

“Yeah,” Rose looked hunched over, uncomfortable, arms around her chest like she wasn’t warm enough. "You'd murmur things in reply if we shook you a little. Like sleep-talking. Kalonia came here and checked you out. Nasty flu. Maybe you were feeling it earlier than when it hit, like a Jedi thing."

Rose was kind. Rose was taking care of her. She could somehow tell she was the most well of their group, and was frankly flattered that she split her time up instead of just using the excuse to nurse Finn back to health. 

“You must have caught this first, last week. Everyone has been sharing this cold. I can’t imagine where we got this bug.”

Rey did not have the heart to tell Rose who they all caught it from.

**Author's Note:**

> As Queen of Not Knowing When to Stop Being Gross, there may be a bad menstrual cramps chapter. And a rating change. _If that would be something you're into..._


End file.
